Cooking for one (Mark Three)

Farway

I've finally gone ga ga, took my car in for pre booked MOT this morning, all set to return home on the bus

Oops, wrong day, I could've sworn today was the 1st August, what a plonker:o

But at least I had the car to put my trolley in instead of lugging it home on the bus

As anticipated, just large bargain beef joint holes on the shelves in Iceland. I did get some of their cod fillets in batter to try out, plus chips & peas, so all set up again

I've mentioned before how my Asda has super YS bargains on Monday mornings, all the LO weekend stuff
Today's haul was fresh salmon fillets, farmed, half price, and a punnet of strawberries, also half price. That's dinner sorted

Lunch was last of the corned beef, with beetroot, in a PB baguette.

Out putting my beans back upright, the weather has really ripened the blackberries, loads of them now, and more apple windfalls.
I'm leaving the blackberries until tomorrow, let the sun dry them a bit after yesterday's deluge, and they may just swell more with the drenching, then it's time for more crumble:j

Dinner will be one of the salmon fillets, fried in butter I think, with baked spud & salad, plenty of my own tomatoes to use now

I've loads of runners, but don't fancy them, I'll pick them though, given the shop prices quoted by Meg, I'm sure I can find someone to give them to

Still pushing Tax return to back of my mind, I've all the figures to hand, just PIA filling it in

caronc

Good evening everyone,

I have a few brambles nearly ripe, just enough for a nibble and loads that should be there in a week or so.
Thankfully my tax should be all be payable through PAYE so I'm hoping to avoid self assessment in coming years if that works out ok. It took a bit of sorting out but I think it's ok now for this year and if anything they may owe me a few £ next year.:)

No gardening got done due to a combination of showers, snoozing and a long natter on the phone with my elder son who is heading off on holiday tonight for a couple of weeks.
Just off to water the greenhouse and deck plants and then I'll prep dinner & cook beans for tomorrow's chilli. While the oven is on to cook dinner I think I'll roast some of the butternut squash in wedges for the freezer as it's too big to use all of it in the chilli.

Brambling

:rotfl::rotfl: Farway we all have our moments, at least it gave the garage something to laugh about :rotfl:

Back to work today and playing catch up, our new guy had another sick day on Friday (he's has about 1 a week) which left my manager on his own and outstanding work from last week for me. The manager was going to say something this morning as he also spends a lot of time on the phone, it obviously went well as he then let him go home early :cool: my manager's a nice guy, too nice really, he needs to grow a pair when it comes to managing the two younger members of the team who seem to come in and leave when they want, that's if they come in at all :mad: it seems one of the other managers told him he was lucky to have the two of us more mature ladies as at least we were reliable :cool: trouble is I can't break old habits and suddenly become unreliable

Right no more moaning

Lunch was tandoori chicken with rice salad, the rice salad was a little dry so I need to do something with tomorrow's portion to make it more palatable :think:

Dinner was the LO pork stroganoff with rice and green veg, I still have another portion left which I don't think it will freeze. Not sure how I frequently manage to half a 4 portion meal and still end up with 3 portions

meg72

Decided to use up the LO beef rather than freezing it So Roast Beef and salad for lunch then Cold Beef chips and pickled beetroot for dinner. so a nice easy day.

moneyistooshorttomention

Brambling - you can only do what you do re this colleague. So - do your own day's work conscientiously, but don't "break your back" to do any of this colleague's work too.

I hope it's not a private firm you are in - as it's a bit of a risk to others if there are people doing this?

I'll admit to wondering just what was going on re a couple of the colleagues I had when I was spending all those years working for the Civil Service. One certainly pretty openly admitted they deliberately misfiled papers "just for a laugh". I tried telling them off about it - but they just laughed in my face at that - and certainly management didnt do anything to stop that colleague mucking around like that.

Part of me was envious that someone could be deliberately mucking things up like that and get away with it - whereas I'd be trying to do my job properly and they'd "leap on me" virtually for breathing. The only logical explanation I could think of for that is that they were scared of him (lowly grade as he was) because maybe they had the same suspicions I did about what exactly he got up to sometimes in his own time. You don't want to know/you really don't want to know ....:cool: and I'll admit to being scared about what I suspect/suspected about him as a person. There was something "not quite" going on in his head.

caronc

Good morning everyone,

That's shocking MTSTM and scary that it was never tackled. Brambling - don't end up as the fall guy for skivvers and weak management!
I'm not sure what the weather will do today - certainly it looks as though we'll get some rain but hopefully not too much.
Grocery order arriving in a bit so once that's put away I'll get the veggies chopped for tonight's chilli and get it simmering away.

Usual toast for breakfast and lunch will be LOs from dinner yesterday.

PasturesNew

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

I'll admit to wondering just what was going on re a couple of the colleagues I had when I was spending all those years working for the Civil Service.

I had a sibling who was studying in London many moons ago - and so they ended up with a summer job in the civil service ... over time she was aware of one permanent member of staff and wondered what he did, so she watched.... and most of the day he spent sorting out "the coffee club". They'd all hand over money to be in the coffee club and he was the one tasked with buying the provisions ... and keeping on top of the area... so he seemed to spend most of his day loitering around the coffee area and talking to people who were there making a coffee... if nobody was about he'd tidy it.

He never appeared to do any actual "work" that he was employed for.

PasturesNew

I did an early morning run to A and L. From my house, L is one way, A the other - and although they're not far apart it seems "too much of a faff" most of the time to do both ... but this morning I did both just to see if L had my fizzy pop in (no).

Stocked up on beans (8 cans), 4 bread rolls, pack of bhajis, pack of eggs, offer of the week cucumber (35p) ... then sausage rolls and a pack of cocktail sausages.

That cucumber was my "annual cucumber" as usually the weather is too changeable to believe I'd ever get round to eating a whole one, but with weather predicted to be hot I believed I could make cheese/cucumber sandwiches a lot in the coming days.

At home I've made up some bread rolls: 2 cheese/cucumber; 1 cheese/cucumber/tomatoes; 1 cheese/tomato. So they're foiled wrapped in the fridge.

I made a boiled egg too, just to sit in the fridge "in case I fancied it". Annoyingly, I made that one, popped it in the fridge and realised I'd done that 2-4 days ago and so I had an unexpected boiled egg already in the fridge, which is the one I used in the bread roll.

Nothing eaten so far.... but one of those rolls will undoubtedly get grabbed at some point. I still have the 3rd cheesecake (pack of 3 individual ones) that I bought on Sunday... that'll get seen off today no doubt.

caronc

PasturesNew wrote: »

I had a sibling who was studying in London many moons ago - and so they ended up with a summer job in the civil service ... over time she was aware of one permanent member of staff and wondered what he did, so she watched.... and most of the day he spent sorting out "the coffee club". They'd all hand over money to be in the coffee club and he was the one tasked with buying the provisions ... and keeping on top of the area... so he seemed to spend most of his day loitering around the coffee area and talking to people who were there making a coffee... if nobody was about he'd tidy it.

He never appeared to do any actual "work" that he was employed for.

Some people have the knack of doing nothing while looking busy down to a fine art! I don't think it's just a civil service/public sector thing either based on conversations with friends over the years who work across a wide variety of sectors.

moneyistooshorttomention

caronc wrote: »

Some people have the knack of doing nothing while looking busy down to a fine art! I don't think it's just a civil service/public sector thing either based on conversations with friends over the years who work across a wide variety of sectors.

Agreed:T

My father told me the tale of MANY years ago how he took over a filing system from someone in a paid job and the first thing he did was throw out a lot of obvious "make work/look busy" stuff his predecessor had made up and get it all logically organised.

On the other hand - I heard that a tale that was told about me when a group of us took over running a voluntary organisation was to the effect of "She went in there - and...bang....all sorts got thrown out as she tidied it up". Admitted = story of my life that I do like putting things in logical order/working out my own little "time and motion" conscious ways of doing things.

Re my ex-colleague = I think I'll be wondering till the day I die whether my intuition that was going "90% this is down to that colleague about Summat Major that happened outside work" and I suspect the police suspect too/but have no proof is correct. I hope it isnt.